If you want to publish your own book, there are some things to consider and think about beforehand. The process can be very easy and just as difficult – it all depends on you. What do you want? What are your goals? These things determine the amount of work and things you want and need to do.
Publish Your Own Book
In this post, I will to take you through some important things to consider and think about if you want to publish your own book.
1. Decide whether you want to do it professionally or as a hobby
Publish your own book professionally or as a hobby makes a WORLD of difference. When you do it as a hobby you can go as big or as small as you want: it doesn’t really matter, as long as you’re happy. But when you want to publish professionally, there are other things to consider: is the quality of my book good enough to publish? What kind of cover would fit and sell the story? The mindset is completely different because your path is – most likely – going to be different.
2. Publish your own book professionally
By this, I mean for profit. Meaning: you want to make a career out of your books. This doesn’t necessarily mean you need to do this full-time, but for most of you (and me), that is precisely what you want. To do this, there are a couple of important things to consider which are essential along the road towards accomplishing your author dreams:
- Write a story that you love.
- Make a plan and stick to it.
- Believe you can achieve the goal.
It’s stated a bit blunt, although straightforward. It is this simple, and it is this hard. However, it all comes down to those three steps.
3. It costs money to publish your own book (professionally)
When you publish your book professionally, you’ll probably spend money. Some authors don’t, but they are a rarity. If you want to save money, you can. However, I want to stress that you’re investing. Your book will be able to make you money for the rest of your life. So, if you believe your story has the capability to earn for the rest of your life, I would personally invest in the book – even when I wouldn’t make it back in the first few years. You don’t have to be a bestseller in the first week when your book comes out – you’ll be able to market and sell your book for years and years and years to come. You’ve got time.
But again: how much money you “should” put in is totally up to you.
The most important, in my opinion, are:
- The Book Cover
- A Professional Editor
- ISBNs (if you want to publish with your own publishing company)
4. Book Marketing (aka: find your readers)
When your book is breathing, and out in the world, you have to get it in front of people: your readers. To do this, you have many options, both paid and free.
Free marketing could be content creation and social media (build your author platform). Paid marketing could be ads or influencer marketing.
Choose whatever options attract you the most, and do them often and vigorously. With marketing, I have found that the most important trait to have is patience. I’m still working on that one, haha.
5. Reviews: remember that this is a subjective field.
I’m not talking about how to get reviews – I’m talking about when you’ll get reviews. It’s inevitable if you want to go pro. But try to remember (and this is SO important): the book publishing industry is subjective. Anything someone says about your book or story is based on their likes and dislikes – not those of the world in general. Even Harry Potter got rejected a couple of times before an editor saw potential in it!
Lots of love,
Britt
